In July 2006 the Building Regulation’s new requirements for energy efficiency took effect,
which are expected to lead to changes in the entire building process in the matter of dealing
with energy efficiency and energy consumption. The new requirements introduced the
concept of “specific energy consumption”, a concept which is very likely to bring a future
need of energy calculations being carried out with greater accuracy at a much earlier stage of
the process.
”VVS GRUPPEN AB” in Lund carry out coarser energy calculations, mostly by hand, at a
quite early stage of the process, while more detailed calculations are left to be carried out by a
constructor at a latter stage. Considering the new, tougher requirements, it is probably only a
matter of time before the need of carrying out more detailed calculations earlier in the process
becomes obvious, which presumably will be followed by a need of other methods than
calculations by hand. As regards method, no requirements have been stated. The
responsibility of choosing a suitable method lies in the hands of each project.
In cooperation with VVS GRUPPEN, a study of one alternative method for more detailed
energy calculations was carried out. The method used was a computer–based simulation tool,
“IDA Indoor Climate and Energy 3.0”. In order to be able to compare the simulations with
the current method used at the company, coarser calculations by hand, comparable to the
company’s, were carried out. The investigation was restricted to calculation of the specific
energy consumption and also to one specific project, a new library-building in a small town
called Lomma.
The purpose of the study was to investigate whether IDA indoor Climate and Energy could
be a useful and suitable method, as regards the interests of VVS GRUPPEN, for carrying out
more detailed calculations at the early stage of the process instead of the current method of
combining courser calculations by hand with simpler computer-based calculations. The
object of the study was to form an opinion of how useful IDA indoor Climate and Energy
would be for VVS GRUPPEN, or a comparable company, when carrying out calculations of
specific energy consumption.
The research resulted in the opinion that IDA Indoor Climate and Energy could be a useful
tool at the company. The company’s object-suited and unconventional solutions do question
the use of such a time-consuming and demanding programme as IDA. At the same time IDA
creates great opportunities for further investigation of specific solutions as well as convenient
follow-ups, useful as regards both current project and documentation of experience for future
projects. The use of IDA at the company would, due to the object-suited and somewhat
unconventional solutions often created by he group, have to be combined with calculations by
hand as well as judgement based on experience. This both in order to being able to check the
credibility of the result and to correct the result in case of a created model where the technical
solution has had to be simplified. The question of whether the use of IDA at VVS GRUPPEN
would be appropriate or not considering the programme’s time-consuming qualities
combined with complicated and object-suited installations was left for further investigation to
decide.